A method of wireless communication by a user equipment (UE), includes estimating a downlink channel to generate a channel estimate. The method also includes obtaining multiple precoding matrices, by a channel state information (CSI) module including a neural network encoder decoder pair, based on the channel estimate and multiple different multiple input multiple output (MIMO) ranks. The method further includes determining a best rank indicator based on the precoding matrices and spectral efficiency estimates for the different MIMO ranks. The method still further includes reporting, to a base station, the best rank indicator, a channel quality index (CQI), and CSI encoder output.